Riding with Brighton

by Haven Francis

  “No, Jay. You haven’t. Yesterday you had a girlfriend. Yesterday you were in love with a girl.”

  “No, Mom, I wasn’t. Yesterday I was not in love with a girl. I’ve never been in love with a girl. Yesterday I finally found the courage to be who I am. Yesterday was the first day I was finally free to be me. Yesterday was the best day of my life. Yesterday was the first time I felt truly happy in a long time. I need you to see that, Mom. I need you forgive me. I want you to want me to be happy.”

  She adamantly shakes her head. “No, Jay. Not like this. If this is the life you’re choosing, then no, I don’t want to see you happy.”

  Her words feel like a punch to the gut. I don’t know what to say to her. All I can do is stare at her, my mom, and look at the hate in her eyes. She doesn’t want me to be happy if it means that I’m gay.

  “Kimberly,” my dad says, coming up behind her. “You need to stop. I won’t allow you to talk to him like that.”

  She turns to him. “I can’t do this, Tom. I can’t pretend like I’m okay with this. I can’t even look at him. I can’t even look at you.” She storms off past him, grabbing her keys off the entryway table.

  “Kim, where are you going? You can’t keep running. You can’t run away from this anymore.”

  She doesn’t respond. She just walks out the door, slamming it behind her.

  All three of us stare silently at the closed door.

  “I hate you,” Ty mutters under his breath, taking off past me and up the stairs.

  I can’t even be mad at that ’cause right now I hate me too.

  Chapter Twenty

  Brighton

  I CAN’T talk right now. I’m ok but I can’t talk.

  That’s what I’ve gotten from Jay tonight. He didn’t respond to the ten texts I’ve sent in return. His phone is going straight to voice mail. He took down his Instagram account—what the hell is going on?

  God, I can’t handle this. And now all my fears are back. He’s not mine. He’s choosing to go back in the closet. He’s never gonna speak to me again. I was wrong, considering that it would be a good idea to give love another shot.

  I haven’t left my room since I got home. I’m ignoring the calls I get from my friends. My family knows enough to leave me alone for right now. There’s nothing they can say to me that will ease my worries. I just hope he’s okay. I can only assume he’s not.

  I keep looking at the photos I took, wondering if it’s the only proof I’ll have that it was all real.

  I shut the photos down and go back to the texting stream.

  You’re killing me. I’m gonna try to get some sleep, but that’s probably not gonna happen. Not until I know what the hell is going on.

  I stare at my phone for five more minutes, becoming more dejected with every passing second. And then the little dots appear, letting me know he’s responding. Immediately, my heart kicks into overdrive. I don’t really care if he tells me he can’t handle this and he’s going back to the straight life. I just need something from him. Anything. I need to see some words that will make me believe he’s okay.

  What have I done to my family? are the words that finally appear.

  My chest immediately hurts. What the hell happened there after I left?

  I can’t live with what I’ve done.

  I open up my phone and call him. What the hell is going through his head right now? It rings four times before he finally answers. “Brighton, I can’t. Not now.” Jesus, he sounds wrecked. The pain in his voice is so clear.

  “What can’t you do?” I whisper.

  “I can’t talk about this right now. I can’t talk to you. If I do, you’ll make me smile. I’ll think about you, and it will make me happy. And I don’t get to be happy. Not right now.”

  “Jay, what the hell happened?”

  All I hear on the other line is a long exasperated sigh.

  “If it’s bad, it can only get better.”

  “No, Brighton, this is just the beginning. The beginning of the rest of my family’s life.”

  “So you’re fighting? You’re fighting with your mom and your brother?”

  “No. Not fighting. Mom left. Ty was already hating me for that, and then he saw my Instagram account. My dad is a mess.”

  “Jesus, Jay. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I shouldn’t have put that picture on there.”

  There is a muffled, bitter laugh on the other line. “He didn’t see your account. All you posted was a picture of me. I’m the selfish, blind idiot who was too worried about people thinking I was still in the closet and had to prove them wrong. Meanwhile, my family’s downstairs tearing themselves apart. I’m such an asshole. All I ever fucking worry about is me. Not once did I consider how this was gonna affect them.”

  “This isn’t about them, Jay. For once, it’s finally about you, and that’s okay. You’re not selfish. You’re going through some pretty serious shit, and if they can’t see that, if they can’t try to understand, then they’re the selfish ones. You can’t keep being miserable just to keep the peace. You’ve come so far, Jay. You can’t turn around now.”

  “What about my dad? I’m gonna be leaving here next year, and what will I be leaving him with? He’ll be alone. My mom’s gonna go, and she’s gonna take Ty with her. He won’t have anyone.”

  “She’s gonna come back. It’s gonna be okay. Your dad just wants you to be happy. He wouldn’t want you going back to pretending for his sake. You know that.”

  “This is just so messed-up. Why did I have to do this now? Why couldn’t I have just waited until I left here?”

  “Are you wishing yesterday wouldn’t have happened?” I ask, holding my breath. If he says yes, my heart just might break.

  “I don’t know,” he finally whispers.

  I don’t have a response to that. How can he not know? I wouldn’t trade yesterday for anything. I wouldn’t give up that time with him for anything. And he doesn’t know.

  “Yesterday I felt like everything was possible. But right now… I just feel hopeless. Which is worse than what I felt before yesterday. Maybe I just should have accepted the nothingness I was living in. It was better than this. I’m sorry, Brighton, I’m just… drained. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just want to close my eyes and forget for tonight. I just want to get some sleep. Can I talk to you tomorrow?”

  Jesus, now I’m feeling hopeless too. And helpless. And completely depressed. “Yeah, okay,” I tell him because I don’t know what else to say. I’m sure he does need sleep. All I can do is hope that when he wakes up tomorrow, things will look different.

  Without another word from him, the line goes dead. I want to call him back. I want to send him an epic text. I want to go to him and yank him back into my life. I want to go back to yesterday when things were possible.

  But I don’t do any of those things. I stare at the pictures I took of us, and I think. I think about everything we went through yesterday. I think about the words Jay used to describe his former life. I think about the conversation we had in Jones’s backyard about how almost everyone is hiding and pretending. Does the entire world suck? And why the hell does it have to be that way? Why are we wired to care so damn much about what other people think? And why the hell do we feel the need to tear people down for being who they are?

  And then a brilliant idea comes to me. A vision. Might even be a damn epiphany. I don’t know, but for the moment at least, I feel inspired… maybe even hopeful. I call Molly and tell her my crazy idea. I also call Nico and Jones. Molly thinks I’m crazy, Nico is amused, Jones is amped up, and all three are on board.

  And then I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t stand the idea of Jay, alone in his room, dreaming bad dreams… or awake and still living the nightmare inside his head.

  I head upstairs, scratch a quick note to my parents, and then I get in the Bronco and head to Jay’s. The whole way, all I can think about is the day we spent driving around in this
thing. All the things we did, all the changes that happened. I can practically feel him sitting next to me. I need him back. I need the kid who went on that journey with me back.

  When I pass by his house, I can see the minivan at the top of his long driveway, and I hope that means his mom came back. I hope that means there is a possibility his family can work through this. But it also makes me doubt what I’m doing. I probably shouldn’t be sneaking into his room. If his mom were to catch me, it would probably send her into another tailspin.

  I sit outside his house for a while looking for signs of life. The house is dark and the longer I sit here, the more I can feel Jay alone in his room. The more I feel like he needs me.

  Fuck it. I drive a couple of blocks down the road and park my truck. I sprint back to his house and head up the side of his front yard thinking I should have dressed in black and painted my face camo or some shit. I’m seriously afraid of his mom. She is one scary woman, and the thought of her catching me has gallons of adrenaline pouring through my veins.

  As stealth-like as possible, I climb on the banister and pull myself up on the eave above the porch. From there it’s pretty easy to climb to the next eave, and from there I can stretch my body and see into Jay’s room. There’s a small crack in the curtains that I can see through, but the room’s dark. I knock lightly and wait, but of course it doesn’t wake him, and I’m not willing to cause any more ruckus for fear of waking the beast. As a last-ditch effort, I push on the window frame and… it slides open. And there’s no screen. Score.

  I hoist myself up on the frame and am as lithe as possible as I swing my legs, followed by the rest of me, inside. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust, but once they do, I can see that Jay’s lying in his bed on top of his comforter fully clothed. Quietly, I slide the window shut and make my way to the bed. After kicking my shoes off, I lie down next to him.

  I stare at him, at his beautiful face, and consider letting him sleep. He needs to sleep. His lips are parted, releasing distraught breaths. His body flinches, and I wonder what he’s dreaming about. His forehead creases and his head shakes. I place my fingers on the lines there, willing them to go away, willing his nightmare to leave him. And then he says, so quietly I can hardly hear him, “Brighton.” He flinches again and his face winces in his sleep. “No,” he mutters.

  I lean down, letting my lips brush over his neck as I cradle his face. “It’s okay.”

  His breaths become rapid for a few seconds before leveling off. I lay my hand on his heart, which is pounding so hard I can feel the vibrations in my palm. I keep it there, waiting for the pounding to subside, before returning my touch to his face, tilting my head so I can see his profile. I run my finger over the ridges of his defined lips, wanting to kiss them… wanting him to feel how much I care about him so he knows he’s not alone.

  “Brighton,” he says again in his painful, sleepy whisper.

  “I’m right here, Jay,” I whisper back, unsure if he can hear me or not.

  He flinches again and his eyes pop open. Even in the dark, I can see that they’re full of panic. He pushes his body away from mine and sits up. Shit. He looks pissed. I sit up too and put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be here. I just needed to make sure you were okay,” I whisper.

  He turns his head toward his door, then back to me, the fear and anger still obvious in his expression. “What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?”

  “Yeah. Probably. I’ll go, okay. I just needed to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m not okay,” he says, seething, shifting out of my grasp. “And if someone finds you here, I’m gonna be even less okay than I am now.”

  His words hurt, his aversion to me hurts, but I obviously understand his reaction. I probably shouldn’t have done this. “I’m leaving,” I tell him, backing out of his bed. “No one will know I was here.”

  He just stares at me as I stand, but as I turn away he says, “Wait… just hold on.”

  I turn back to him, shove my hands in my pockets, and wait. He gets out of his bed on the opposite side of where I’m standing before going to his door and locking it. I duck my head so he can’t see my smirk. When he’s standing in front of me, I raise my eyes to his. His stare feels intense, but I can’t make out the expression on his face.

  He shakes his head and runs his fingers through my hair before bringing them to the sides of my face. His touch is rough, and I can’t tell if he’s gonna head butt me or kiss me; it feels like it could go either way. He grasps on harder and slowly pulls me until his lips are touching mine. I let out a sigh of relief into his mouth and take my hands out of my pockets, wrapping them around his waist, pulling him to me. His lips start moving slowly, urging my mouth open, and his tongue slides across mine.

  I feel him in a way I didn’t with our other kisses. It’s so soft and so quiet and so intimate it doesn’t even feel like a kiss. It feels like a conversation, like a moment. As with everything I’ve done with him, it makes me feel attached in just one more way.

  But at the same time, it feels like it could be exactly the opposite for him: a good-bye, as if he’s cherishing this kiss like it could be the last.

  When he pushes away from me and lets out a dejected sigh, it feels like the period at the end of that sentence—the one where he’s telling me good-bye. I don’t jump into panic mode, though. I wait for him to tell me whatever it is he needs to tell me.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” he finally breathes, taking a step away from me and falling onto his bed. He leans his elbows on his legs and buries his face in his hands.

  I sit beside him and ask, “What part of this are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. All of it.”

  “Okay.”

  He sits up and turns his eyes to mine. “Okay?”

  I reach over and grab his leg, aware that it could make him want to run but needing to feel connected to him. “What am I supposed to say, Jay? You know how I feel. You know I want to keep you in this thing with me. You’re the one who told me how awful shit was for you before you came out…. I obviously don’t want you going back to that.” I suck in a breath before going on. “But if that’s what you’re choosing—if you’re choosing to put a Band-Aid on the situation for the sake of your family, I can’t stop you. I don’t get to make your decisions for you. Your mom shouldn’t get to do it either. But if you think this is what’s best for you, what am I supposed to say? Whatever you do… it’s okay. You know what I want you to do, but it’s your life. You’re the one who has to live it. So… okay.”

  I can feel the intensity in his eyes, even though I can’t see them clearly, but then he turns them away from me. “No matter what I do, it’s never gonna be okay. I already took this too far.”

  I flinch at his words that immediately send a surge of anger through me. I’ve heard those words before. They’re the words that are muttered before stepping back in the closet and closing the door. “What did you take too far?” I ask.

  He stutters a laugh. “Everything. I went too far with everything. How am I supposed to undo all the shit I did?”

  I have to close my eyes as I try with everything I have to get my anger under control. “So you regret it? Everything you did yesterday… it’s just a bunch of regrets?” I manage to mutter.

  He shakes his head. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

  I stare at him. I stare at him and try not to punch him in his stupid, beautiful face. How the hell can he say that? It’s me who’s shaking my head now. God, he is unbelievable. And not who I thought he was. I swear to God, my character judgment skills are seriously flawed. I stand and tell him, “I’m gonna go. I guess I’ll see you around.”

  “What?” he asks, lunging forward and grabbing my hand. “You’re leaving me? Now?”

  I laugh at that; I can’t help it. He can’t seriously expect me to stick around.

  He stands and grabs ahold of both of my hands. “That’s not what I meant. My head is so
messed-up right now. That’s not what I meant.”

  “No? What the hell did you mean, then? How else am I supposed to interpret you regretting everything about yesterday?”

  “Fuck,” he says through a long breath. “If I had just told my parents, or the entire world for that matter, that I was gay—that’s something I could get out of. If I had just broken up with Sadie—that’s something I could fix. If I had just admitted to myself that I was gay and stopped denying it—that’s something I could easily turn around. But you… the way I feel about you… that’s not something I can reverse. That’s not something I can just forget about. What happened between us yesterday… it changed me. And there’s nothing I can do about that. I want to go back to the way things were for the sake of my dad. For the sake of my entire family. And if it wasn’t for you, that might be possible. But now it’s not.”

  His words ease my worries, but still, he regrets that he changed; he regrets that I’m part of him now. “I don’t know what to say to that…. ‘I’m sorry that I had the best day of my life with you? I’m sorry that we went through that together? I’m sorry that we are weirdly connected now and you can’t get out of it?’”

  He drops my hands so he can run his through his hair. “God, that’s so fucking stupid. How the hell could I even think about regretting any second of yesterday? How could I consider regretting anything that’s happened between us? Or anything about you? Honest to God, Brighton, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t regret that. I guess I just regret the fact that I did this to them and that there’s no way to fix it. I don’t want to give this up. I can’t give you up. Which means there’s no backing out of this. There is no way to put my family back together.”

  I reach my arms around his shoulders and pull him to me, holding him tight. “Things with your family were already broken whether you realized it or not. Your mom decided a long time ago that her love for you was gonna be conditional. You were already broken. It’s not your fault. All you can do is hope that you guys get put back together and that this time, it’s the right way.”